Lifestyle

Bruno and Christophe live in Paris. They are the fathers of six-week-old twins Olympe and Columbe. (KPTV)

Portland, OR (KPTV) -- After having been together for 14 years, Bruno and Christophe, a gay couple from France, were ready to start a family.

They wanted biological children, but for them, surrogacy was not an option in their home country, where French law sees it as prostitution because of the "hiring" of a woman for her body.

Though surrogacy may be illegal in many countries, Oregon is one of the few places in the world where gay men can legally have biological children.

The process, for gay men, is complicated and expensive - think $100,000. A woman donates an egg or, in the case of Bruno and Christophe, two eggs. The eggs are fertilized, and in this case, Bruno's sperm was used to fertilize one egg and Christophe's sperm was used to fertilize the other egg.

The two eggs were then implanted in the womb of a second woman - a surrogate.

The couple met their surrogate, Veronica, before the pregnancy.

"I look at Bruno and Christophe and I just think they're perfect," Veronica told FOX 12. "They deserve children. This is right and I felt that from the beginning."

One Portland clinic, Oregon Reproductive Medicine, now specializes in helping hundreds of gay men from all over the world become fathers, and it helped Bruno and Christophe become the fathers of twins.

Bruno and Christophe visited Oregon a number of times during the pregnancy but when they weren't here, they used Skype to speak with Veronica constantly. Veronica also sent emails with pregnancy photos and, as much as possible, involved Bruno and Christophe in the pregnancy of their twins.

The three of them now think of each other as an extended modern family and plan yearly visits and lots of Skype chats.

"Everybody asks me more about how much I'm going to miss the girls and how hard that's going to be. I'm going to miss the parents - they're like brothers to me now," Veronica said.